


Help I'm Alive

by coulsons-hawk (allyoop)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blindness, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Despair, Fix-It, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Ghosts, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Kissing, M/M, NOW WITH A FIX IT, Sad, Short, Stream of Consciousness, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unresolved Tension, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-02-15 02:19:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2212104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyoop/pseuds/coulsons-hawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>an archer without eyes is nothing, nothing, nothing</p><p>(Loki's magic left Clint without sight and without hope)</p><p>(Read tags and notes for warnings)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. things get worse

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: suicidal thoughts and attempt, sadness so much sadness, MAJOR ANGST, canonical character death (pre-fic), unresolved ending.
> 
> *** NOW WITH REQUESTED PART II***

_ Help, I’m Alive _

 

Clint was once told to practice until his fingers moved before his mind had time to catch up. His hands knew his bow like it was just another arm; he could nock, pull, aim, with more ease than signing his own name. He could shoot with eyes squeezed shut and know he’ll hit the target every time. He’s done it perfectly before, even blindfolded with the roar of a hungry crowd around him.

But _this_ wasn’t a choice; this wasn’t a _show_.

Clint Barton could not see, and what was an archer without his eyes?

 _Nothing_.

His heart still rattled in empty hopefulness every time he awoke, knowing it was morning by the wail of his alarm. He would rub his eyes and look towards his familiar window, breath held still as he stared.

But Clint saw nothing.

 

He was lucky, they said, that it was only his eyes and not his heart. That the ice had melted from his limbs and didn’t leave him broken and numb. That his feet still ran because he willed them to and not by someone else’s order. Loki’s damage was an earthquake that cracked foundations to their core. He was lucky he wasn’t shattered and locked away all in white in a place people go to recover but only just go to be forgot. Clint never opened his mouth to protest; his words were wasted on doctors’ ears and he had never been very good at them anyways. He said nothing for he was _nothing_.

Natasha understood. To the best of her ability, in the deep of her heart, she understood about Clint’s nothingness. Even today, even after being dragged together through blood and sweat and broken bodies they could not name, Clint didn’t know everything the Red Room did to her. But she was his only confidant, the only one he whispered that word to, the only one with the capacity to offer more than stale words and a too-warm hand on his shoulder. He felt bruised from all the hands that have squeezed him in camaraderie, offering a comfort in bad times.

Natasha didn’t touch him. That was the greatest kindness of all.

“Natasha. I’m _nothing._ Its dark but I’m so lucid. Everything in me is saying I can still see, that I’m just not opening my eyes. But there is nothing there. I see nothing. I am _nothing_.”

“Yes, Clint. I know. But we’re _all_ nothing. Always nothing to ourselves.”

She never said any more. Whether it was some cryptic philosophy or just a phrase she saw overlayed on a filtered photo, it didn’t matter. In that moment they understood each other and he wasn’t ‘Clint-the-blind-archer’, but he was just Clint again, in body and mind.

But these moments are hiccups in his life and soon his hands would find their way to an arrow again, cold steel a threat even to his callused fingers, toying with the point as a reminder of the power it once held. It could stop armies, wars. It could draw blood before a man blinked. But whose blood now? His own?

 

On day forty-three someone took away his arrows. Clint could only assume it was Natasha, for few others still bothered to visit him, as silent as he was. It didn’t matter to him; most were broken by his own hands in frustration when his muscle memory could not free him from the leaden weight of his own blindness. He knew he could shoot by the sound of a voice or the rustle of leaves unseen. But what was the point? Clint would never be on the field again. He was too risky, nothing but a liability to the team. And gone were the days where he could lead operations on his own. Hawkeye was a public face, was a hero. _Was_.

He knew he should be devastated. His arrows were his résumé, his trophies, his name. But Clint was now an archer without eyes, so it felt apt that he would be an archer without arrows. Whatever they thought Clint would do with a room of sharp steel seemed meaningless as they left every gun in the cabinet and knife in the drawer.

There was something calming about dismantling and reassembling a gun without your eyesight. The click of each part into place was a rhythmic comfort. His hands were steady and his mind was free to walk.

There was no manual for blindness, no cheat sheet on how to deal with the sudden loss of something you once knew so vividly. His magical blindness was even worse. The lights weren’t out; they were stolen. Clint knew there were lamps burning bright, taunting him just at the edge of his vision. But he would turn and turn but there was, once again, _nothing_. He wasn’t even allowed to be blind in peace. Loki’s ice still crackled in some hidden vein, bubbling up just to freeze any last few hopes he finds.

The metal clinks in the empty room were a rhythm for his heart to echo. He was lost but the steady clicks gave him a drum to follow. Clint’s hands, still stubborn, kept moving for hours and hours so that he could keep treading the dark that wanted to drown him.

“Natasha. They left the guns, every single one.”  
“That isn’t a question.”  
“It wasn’t supposed to be.”  
“You don’t want to know why?”  
“I know why. They thought the arrows would tempt me more than a gun; that’d I’d go the poetic route.”  
“That you’d kill yourself, you mean.”  
“A nothing man can’t be killed. He’s already dead.”  
“So why take away your arrows?”  
“Then I can’t be reminded of living.”

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. Clint had planned it to the very last detail, with multiple options, in case the first one didn’t stick. One night when he still had his arrows he had tested his resolve. Picking a favorite (sleek broadhead, steel tip) he rolled it in his hand, making sure of the balance point, weighing it in his palm. Clint was strong, it wouldn’t take much to push the sharp point in, quick and deadly, and end it as fast as his blood could drain. The point dragged slowly down his jugular, tracing the vein, cold steel against his warm blood. In one second it could be done; his hands had always been swift. He leaned into the tip, the sensation just short of unbearable, wondering what his last thought would be. Whether his life would flash before his eyes. Or perhaps Loki’s magic would take that too; even his memories before his blindness reduced to _nothing_.

He stayed there, a millimeter from breaking skin, just breathing into the weapon pressed against his neck. It felt like hours, the decision in a restless limbo in his mind. And then he felt a familiar ( _impossible, cruel, hopeful_ ) hand on his shoulder. He was pulled gently back from the arrow’s threat by something almost as light as wind. But it was enough. The shock of the touch in his supposedly empty room had pulled him out of the cold white nothing and dropped his arrow to the floor. A single struggling breath, and then Clint whipped around in his chair, arms flung out hoping and reaching. He wanted to touch, to feel, to kiss who had stopped him. He felt half crazed in his search; stumbling into familiar objects despite his memorization of the layout, knocking over things he didn’t care about in his search for the one thing for which he did. But he didn’t touch anything that mattered.

He staggered onto what he knew was his couch and ran his empty hands across his face. He didn’t _feel_ feverish; he didn’t think he was hallucinating. He sniffed the air again, his whole body tense with fears.

It was still there. Unmistakable and unforgettable and _new_. The faintest smell of leather, clean cotton, and that cologne he bought him for Christmas.

It was so impossible it had to be Loki. Some deep vein of magic that found the one last thing he loved and was twisting it around and around to keep Clint in this cycle of intolerable pain. He may be blind but he wasn’t dumb. And Natasha had told him, cold and quick and honestly. 

Phil Coulson was dead. So Clint had to be imagining, in some sort of desperate fantasy, that Phil was here: hand on his back and cologne in the air, here with him in the room.

 _But its been months_ a voice, horribly steady and logical, whispered _its been months and you haven’t been anywhere near Phil’s apartment. How could you smell him? How could you feel him? What pulled you back from your steel-tipped death?_

He had no answers. _Nothing_.

 

He couldn’t sleep. But yet he did, by accident. He woke to his alarm like always, looking towards the window from habit, and feeling that same emptiness scrape his ribs raw with the knowledge that he was the same. Still blind, still useless, still alone.


	2. before they get better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same tags & warnings apply, but this ending is significantly happier :)

It was winter.

Faint Christmas music could be heard, someone he knew had gotten engaged, and an extra blanket had been added to his bed while he slept. Clint wished he could say he was upset by the fact the world moved on even as he stayed in his apartment, each day unendingly the same. But he wasn’t; he didn’t feel things much anymore. He was empty and nothing ever seemed to fill him. He stayed in his self-made prison, never seeing the point of venturing out. It wasn’t like he would ever see anything new. Most days he would listen to the TV for hours, just letting the cycle of news, talk shows, soaps, and news wash over him in a familiar wave of noise. In the beginning he had hoped, had kept it hidden like a single match in the wind, that _something_ would come. That he would have an idea, or that anyone would have a stroke of inspiration and discover that Clint Barton, blind archer, wasn’t useless after all. But days turned to weeks turned to months, and no purpose ever came. Things seemed easier after he embraced his nothingness. He chose his new life by lack of participation.

But it was winter and the world kept moving. Even the news had shifted to a happier tone, telling human-interest stories full of kind strangers, anonymous Santas, and young love. Clint had always secretly liked winter, despite a hatred for grey snow and slick roads. His childhood holidays had always been canned food and newspaper wrapped trinkets, but even when things were the roughest, he remembered those days being warm. But now Clint was an impossible blind man without a hand to hold or a guide to rely on. He was so beyond lonely he couldn’t find words to describe it since _lonely_ no longer worked.  
He was transparent.

It had been a natural progression and Clint understood that. He was sullen on his good days and non-responsive on his worst. He was an awful companion even to those that liked to talk only about themselves. And so the visits became less and less, until a phone call seemed to replace all his usual meetings. He could hear it over the phone sometimes, that edge in their voices that let him know that he was a chore. Simply just a checkmark on a to-do list for that day. _Call Clint to make sure he’s still alive._ Check. With the rebuilding of SHIELD, even Natasha couldn’t make it as often as she once did. At least she never asked Clint how he was when she called. It wasn’t like the answer would ever change. So instead she told him small things, like how awful pumpkin spice season is, how her favorite hole-in-the-wall bookstore was about to close, how Sam was fitting in with the old team. It was nice to hear her stories. They always felt a little warmer than the wash of news from his TV. But as all good things end, she always had to hang up the phone, with a firm promise to call again. And Clint would find himself alone on the couch ( _again_ ) with a bland microwave dinner ( _again_ ) and nothing but the detached voices of newscasters filling the room ( _again_ ).

Maybe that’s why it took him two days to realize his mistake. His mind had dulled in his inactivity, turning each day into the same monotone grey, with nothing ever changing. It was some day in the middle of the week that wasn’t Monday (when the week’s food was delivered) or Thursday (when Natasha called). He was waking to his usual toneless alarm and pulling off the covers when it hit him. Suddenly his emptiness latched onto a tiny detail and the bloom of new feelings inside him was overwhelming and he had to lie back down. He tried to breath, tried to clear the dust he had let form in his mind. It was still there in his hand when he looked back down. _The new blanket_.

Who had come into his room? No one visited him anymore, and even if they deigned to do so, no one would ever visit unannounced in the middle of the night just to drop off a blanket. He scrambled onto the top of his bed, gathered the blanket in his arms, and inhaled. It was there. So faint any sane person would chalk it up to wishful memories, but this was Clint and he knew crazy. _This_ wasn’t crazy. That slight whiff of Phil’s cologne was there, quietly insistent and loving and warm.

“Phil?” He voice cracked from underuse. He wanted water, alcohol, anything wet to chase down the last of these cobwebs. But he also didn’t want to move, didn’t want to let go of the blanket he had clutched to his chest. “Phil, please…”

Nothing answered him and Clint didn’t know what he had expected. Just because a blanket came to him days ago doesn’t mean Phil was still in that room, waiting in some corner that Clint magically hadn’t discovered. Yet the white silence that met him in response didn’t stomp out the fragile hope inside him. This was Phil’s cologne on a mysterious blanket, and that was enough for him. His heart had warmed.

The rest of his day was strange. His previous routine was genuinely boring, his microwaved meals were indistinguishable from their cardboard packaging, and the TV noise was just that; noise. Something inside him yearned for the ice-cold air that froze your nose as you inhaled, the kind that woke you from the inside out. Following his near-forgotten whims, Clint pried open the bedroom window, stuck his head out, and breathed. If he was honest, it smelled like crap. City smoke, burnt garlic from the café at the corner, fumes from the trashcans out back. But it smelled like _life_.

The phone rang. He left the window open and walked to answer it. He was not in a rush; he wasn’t expecting anyone to call.

“Clint?”

It was Natasha. His head swirled for a moment before he answered. “It isn’t Thursday already, is it?”

“No.” He could hear an almost imperceptible sigh of relief. “We had your windows and doors wired just in case someone tried to break in.”

“Or I tried to leave here.”

“You’re allowed to come and go whenever you want.”

“You know what I meant.”

There was a pause. “I do.”

Clint had a sudden thought. “Does that mean you can track whoever comes and goes from here?”

“Yes, we track whenever someone visits. Its for your safety, we’re not just-“

“I know, I know.” His heart was revived and beating faster than it had in weeks. “Can you tell me if anyone has entered in the past week? Someone who wasn’t supposed to visit?”

“Do you think someone broke in?”

“No- yes. I’m not sure. There’s this blanket…”

“A blanket?” He could hear some faint keys typing in the background over the phone. “I’m sorry, there’s been no one.”

“Nothing in the last couple of days?”

“Nothing, Clint.”

He almost put down the phone. All the warmth that had been rekindled with his theories and wild hopes was extinguished in one short sigh. He felt emptier than he had begun, his ribs a vacuum space, taking in nothing but the frigid air.

“Thanks for calling.” It was his oft-repeated words, just as feelingless as the last time.

“I’ll call again.” Her usual.

“I know.” And Clint hung up on her instead of waiting for the click.

It had to have been the blindness; the same ice that wrecked his eyes was breaking his heart for good this time. Clint was done with this nothingness. If this was all his life held for him now, a constant struggle for purpose, a meaningless rollercoaster of hopes crashing and burning, then Clint was _done_.

There was still a gun. It had been left unhidden and accessible, probably for his safety if there was a break in, so that he wouldn’t be defenseless against an unseen foe. This time he knew exactly who his enemy was and it was a _what_. His life was killing him, spreading his already broken spirit thinner and thinner until even air passed through him. He had been nothingness for a while, just subsisting on the slightest scraps of new words from friends and the tolerable but steady tone of his everyday grey. But this? This mystery that gave him hope just to take it away was a death sentence. Clint wanted to choose his own out rather than die by the broken heart he was being given, and so he went to find the gun.

He didn’t know what to expect, now that he was sitting in his kitchen with a cold gun in his hand. This had never been one of his options, he had always thought it would be too messy and the tiny selfish voice in his head had wanted an open casket. It was heavy but familiar in his grip and he toyed with it out of habit. It was a bike ride, he thought, just a movement he’s done before but this time pointed back at him. Clint knew he wouldn’t miss; his hands were still steady and sure. It was simple, so simple, and then that mocking laugh that haunted his edges would be silenced and the unyielding emptiness stretched before him would be gone. A cold bullet could make him warm again.

He attached the silencer, out of respect for neighbors he wasn’t even sure still lived there, and turned it slowly around in his hands. Clint pressed the gun lightly to his heart, just pausing and thinking. He wondered what his last thought would be. He hoped in death he’d be remembered better than he was while living.

“ _No._ ”

The wind through his still open window sounded like a sigh, almost tauntingly human. He chuckled to himself. Of course when he finally decides to _do_ something, he starts imagining voices telling him to stop.

“ _Clint, no_.”

He could be crazy, he very well could have lost his senses after weeks of pure loneliness and an empty routine. But he couldn’t make up those hands he felt on his own; his imagination wasn’t strong enough.

“Hello?”

The gun was taken from his hands and he heard the safety click. There was someone in the room with him; someone now crouched in front of him so close he could smell him-

_Leather, clean cotton, cologne._

“Phil?” He reached out and his hands were met by warm ones. “Say something, please. I don’t want to be crazy. Be here, please be here.”

“It’s me, Clint.”

All the months of nothingness broke inside him and everything he had tried not to feel rushed to the surface. His skin was fire where their hands met and his tears ran freely, unwilling to be held back any more. “You’re dead. They told me you were dead.”

He was pulled into a hug, and if Clint had any doubts, they were banished as he folded himself against that too-familiar chest. Someone could replicate smell, even voice, but this was Phil’s skin. This was his bones, his muscles, his warmth. Clint was crying into his shirt and he wasn’t sure if he could stop. A dam had been toppled inside him.

“I’m so sorry.” Phil pressed gentle lips to his forehead. “I was dead, but I wasn’t. I’m not sure why but nothing really makes sense, so I’ve been searching.” Clint could hear the pain in his voice. “This whole time I was looking for something I’m not sure exists, I just let everyone think I was gone.”

“You’re here now.”

“Don’t forgive me, Clint. Be angry at me, at SHIELD. _I’m_ angry. I shouldn’t have stayed away for so long, shouldn’t have let Fury lie to everyone.”

“Fury knew?”

“He knew everything.” The lips were back, leaving gentle kisses along the streaks of tears on Clint’s face. “I should have done something to let you know.”

“You really should have.” Clint wanted to be pissed, wanted to scream and kick the walls and blame someone, _anyone_ , for taking away the one steady thing he loved. But his once empty ribs only had room for tears and gratitude because _Phil was here now._

“Please let me help. I’ll capture Loki, I would be more than happy to take him by force. We can make him fix it. Make you better.”

Clint shook his head, not wanting to think about that, not wanting to hope too big. “I just want you right now. Just you.” He stepped back from Phil’s arms, running a hand up from his shoulders to cup his jaw. All he wanted was to touch, to kiss, to hold this incredibly fragile thing he wasn’t quite sure he had actually gotten back.

“Okay.” Phil leaned into his touch. “I’m not leaving you.”

“We have a lot to talk about.” He brushed his lips to Phil’s, and an unused smile returned slowly to his face. “But not right now.”

Phil returned his kiss and Clint felt a few more coils of tightness relinquish their steel grip. He could breathe again.

“Talking is for later.” Phil whispered against his ear, making a shiver run down Clint’s neck. “I’ve missed you. I never stopped missing you.”

“Me too.”

 

They kissed and Clint felt his very bones grow warm again. He was still blind, still broken, but those flashes of light that were always just out of view seemed to come a little more into focus.

He had a bloom of hope, and this one was too strong to be extinguished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Kudos and comments are appreciated as always.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are appreciated as always!


End file.
